Before the World Melts

The concrete pressed hot and hard against Kathy's face. Every breath pulled dry heat into her throat and burned her lungs until she could barely expand her chest. Outside the central supply bunker, the air in the shade was over fifty degrees Celsius and the ground in the sun was over sixty, and the soles of her shoes had started to soften.

Behind the iron security gate, Luiz stood in the shaded entrance, his linen shirt completely dry. Arzu stood beside him, tilting a plastic bottle to drink ice-cold water and letting the excess spill onto the stone floor.

"We ran the rationing algorithm again, Kathy," Luiz said, his voice flat over the gate speaker. "There is no room in the allocation for someone who isn't assigned. Arzu needs the stability, and so does our child."

Kathy pressed her cracked, bleeding palms against the hot steel bars and tried to force words past her swollen tongue. "I built this supply network, Luiz. Every crate in that vault has my signature on the manifest."

Arzu took another slow drink, wiped her lips, and turned toward the inner corridor without looking back. Luiz pulled the manual lever, and the three-ton blast door dropped into place with a dull thud.

The heat closed in. Her eyes dried and stung, her sight blurred and faded, and the sun kept burning her skin until everything went black.

Kathy opened her eyes and pulled a deep, shuddering breath of cold, filtered air into her chest.

She sat up on a gray fabric sofa, and her lungs expanded without pain. Above her, the air conditioner ran quietly, and a steady, cool draft moved across her skin. Sunlight came through the sheer curtains, bright but without any burn.

On the opposite wall, the digital calendar glowed blue: June 12.

She knew the date. It was the morning he had first put the contract in front of her.

Her hands were smooth and whole. There were no blisters, no peeling skin, and no dried blood beneath her fingernails. She touched her face, tracing her jawline and her lower lip. Her skin was cool.

A stack of papers hit the glass coffee table in front of her with a sharp crack, and a few loose pages slid across the surface.

"Sign it, Kathy," Luiz said.

He stood beside the table in a tailored navy suit, clicking a blue ballpoint pen between his fingers. His hair was neat, his collar clean, and his eyes showed none of the exhaustion that would mark him weeks from now.

"I gave you three full days to think this over," Luiz said, in the same unbothered voice he had used at the bunker gate. "The board needs a clear leadership structure before the end of the second quarter. Your presence in the supply chain division creates tension with our main investors. We need a clean break before the mid-year audit."

On the glass table lay the contract, printed on thick white paper:

Agreement for Voluntary Dissolution of Marriage and Forfeiture of Corporate Assets.

In her previous life, Kathy had broken down at this exact moment. She had cried until her throat was raw, pleading for an explanation, trying to save a seven-year marriage she believed was built on mutual sacrifice. She had spent two weeks begging him to reconsider and refusing to sign, while Luiz quietly transferred her corporate equity to Arzu's family, drained their joint accounts, and bought places in private underground shelters across the city. By the time she realized what was happening, she had been stripped of every asset she owned.

Now, looking at the lines of his suit, she felt no panic. The grief that had filled her for years was gone, and what was left was a quiet stillness.

"You want my entire equity stake in the logistics network," Kathy said, her voice steady.

"It belongs to the company," Luiz replied, crossing his arms and looking down at her. "You brought no capital into this marriage seven years ago. Fifty thousand dollars is more than reasonable given how little you've contributed operationally over the last two years. The board will not approve a higher payout, and I am not inclined to press them on your behalf."

He spoke with total confidence, sure that she had no other options and no leverage.

Before Kathy could answer, a sharp burn flared on the inside of her left wrist.

The pain was small and intense, running straight along her pulse point. She looked down at her arm. Under her skin, the dark green jade ring her mother had given her on her deathbed began to change. The stone thinned into a stream of bright green light that seeped into her flesh and veins. A faint mark shaped like a hollow square settled onto her skin above the bone, then faded.

At once, a vast space opened inside her mind.

It was ten thousand square meters, silent and still, with no air, no gravity, no light, and no passage of time. She understood its rules immediately, without being told: anything placed inside would stay in the exact state it was in at the moment of entry. Hot food would stay hot forever, ice would never melt, and nothing would rot or age.

Kathy closed her left hand into a fist and felt the mark pulse against her palm.

Luiz tapped the pen against the edge of the table, frowning at her silence. "I don't have all day to sit here while you stare into space, Kathy. Arzu is waiting downstairs in the car. We have a lunch with the regional logistics directors at one o'clock, and I intend to give them a signed agreement."

Kathy looked up and met his impatient gaze without any expression. She reached across the table, picked up the document, and turned straight to the final page.

"Give me the pen," she said.

Luiz paused for a fraction of a second, surprised that she wasn't resisting, and then one corner of his mouth lifted. He handed her the pen and watched as she pressed the tip to the signature line.

Kathy signed her name with quick, practiced strokes, closed the document, and slid it back across the table.

"The agreement says the payment is wired immediately upon signature," she said, her voice clipped. "Transfer the funds now, or the hard copy stays on this table."

Luiz took out his phone, his thumb moving quickly across the screen. "Finance already prepared the wire. You'll see the confirmation in your account within two minutes." He picked up the contract, checked the signature page, and tucked it into his leather briefcase. "I'm glad you finally decided to be practical, Kathy. Drama doesn't suit you, and it certainly won't help you rebuild your life."

He adjusted his cuffs and walked to the front entrance without looking back. The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Kathy alone in the living room.

Kathy stood up at once. She did not watch his car leave the driveway. She opened her banking app on her phone, and the balance refreshed, showing the fifty-thousand-dollar transfer alongside her savings, which brought her available cash to sixty-two thousand dollars.

She walked to the kitchen. On the counter sat a cup of hot coffee, steam rising from the surface.

Kathy touched the side of the mug and focused on the square space in her wrist.

The mug vanished from her hand.

In her mind, she could see it sitting in the dark, silent void, perfectly upright, the steam frozen above the coffee. She focused again and willed it back. The mug reappeared in her hand, the porcelain still hot, the steam drifting again into the cool air of the room.

She took a slow sip. The coffee was scalding, bitter, and real.

She looked out the kitchen window at the blue sky above Riverdale City. That sky would turn white. The power grid would fail, the reservoirs would dry up, and the people who scoffed at her now would be searching for clean water and finding none.

She set the mug down, took out her notebook, and uncapped a black marker. She drew a line down the center of the first page and wrote a heading at the top:

Phase One: Essential Supplies.

"Luiz," she whispered to the empty room, her voice cold and steady, "you can keep your corporate equity. I'm taking everything else."